We liberals like to repeat the mantra of a “big gaping hole” in the Ontario PCs provincial budget because it’s true. The Hudakites, if that’s even a word, do in fact promise to make plenty of cuts to public services but aren’t clear on how they are going to deal with the province’s expenditures.
Cuts, cuts, and cuts they say! But when necessary spending needs to be made, where is the money coming from?
Fixated on balancing the budget by hating the social services that the provincial government funds, Rob Ford suddenly awoke from fairyland yesterday and realized he needed to ask Premier Dalton McGuinty for an allowance.
A much needed allowance of at least $364 billion dollars.
In an unprecedented move, Ford scheduled the meeting with Dalton earlier this week.
I can scarcely believe what I’m hearing, Dalton, Ford… Ford, Dalton! The meeting, in my opinion, should have been televised.
This cash injection will help Ford pay for some specific projects, including funding for child care subsidies, words that I know conservatives don’t like very much, and even half of the TTC’s yearly operating budget.
So the question on this liberal’s mind is, did McGuinty request that Rob Ford get down on his knees and beg or did he just say “I told you so”, and just gave Ford the money he so desperately needs.
In fact I think the joke’s at the conservatives’ expense on this one, “liberals spend and we save”. Yeah right!
All governments spend, regardless of their political leanings. The exception is where the money is going. With the liberals it’s almost always spent on improving peoples’ lives, however, with the conservatives it almost always goes on appearances, looking tough, trying to cut spending, be more democratic etc. Yes trying but never really succeeding should be the new Ontario conservative motto.
After running a successful federal campaign on promises of balancing the budget and marketing themselves as champions of fiscal prudence, the provincial conservatives are now chocking on their own words.
Ford is experiencing firsthand the reality that the Liberals have been laboring in vain all these months to explain to him, that regardless of how ambitious a government may be, it takes time to pay off debt.
Also the liberals have tried telling the conservatives that it is nearly impossible to go on an aggressive cost-cutting campaign, whether it’s social services on the chopping block or taxes, without political repercussions.
This is doubly true now, when conservatives are spending frivolously on things like re-introducing the Royal moniker in Canadian Forces, trying to look tough by starting prisoner chain gangs and waging a war on drug trafficking that largely doesn’t exist in Canada.
Despite Ford’s dislike of education and his crusade against public libraries in Toronto, actions that make him very much hated by liberals of all stripes, McGuinty probably went easy on and tried to reason with him.
However, if perchance reason failed and I strongly believe it did, I see no hope for redemption and the re-election of our rotund blond and blue eyed mayor.
